NATION BRACES FOR DISPUTED ELECTIONS

Compiled by Gary BorgCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Trucks with sirens blaring and packed with armed riot police patrolled the streets of Nigeria's largest city Thursday before local elections, which a pro-democracy group is boycotting in protest of the military government.

The pro-democracy Joint Action Committee, or JAC, urged a boycott of Saturday's elections, organized by the military rulers.

"We are calling on people to frustrate the elections within all their powers and means to make a nonsense of the polls," said Yinka Odumakin of the JAC, which claims to represent all of Nigeria's human rights groups.

The military government, seen as a pariah by much of the international community, says the non-party council elections are the first step in its program to return Nigeria to democracy by 1998. Western nations have intensified pressure for a return to democratic rule since the hanging last November of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other minority-rights activists.

Nigeria has been in political crisis since 1993, when a previous military regime voided results of a presidential election.